Michelin Star & Bib Gourmand winners: Chicago 2021on April 29, 2021 at 4:55 pm
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Uber driver rushes gunshot victim to hospital: ‘I was yelling: I’ve got a kid with bullet wounds and he’s dying. He’s got minutes’on April 29, 2021 at 5:04 pm
Michael Bussan considers himself a tough guy, but the Uber driver couldn’t help crying as he rushed a wounded man and his brother to a hospital after they crashed their car while fleeing from a shooting.
“His brother is screaming, ‘I’ve got you bro, I’ve got you bro,'” Bussan said. “I’ve never seen two people care so much about each other.”
Bussan said he had dropped off a passenger in the South Loop when he saw the crash in the 1000 block of South Clark Street around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The brothers and another person had been riding in a silver Chevrolet Malibu when someone in another car fired at them, hitting one of the brothers several times in the abdomen in the 2900 block of South Indiana Avenue.
The driver of the Malibu continued driving to get to a hospital, but crashed into a Jeep Wrangler, police said. Coming on the scene, Bussan said he asked what happened and was told a man had been shot but that an ambulance was still several minutes away.
People were staring at the scene from a distance with their phones out, said Bussan, 46. “They wouldn’t get out of their cars. And I’m like, ‘Are you going to help him?’
“I’m like, ‘I’ll take you, both of you,” Bussan said he told the 21-year-old gunshot victim and his brother. “Take care of your brother while I’m driving.”
Bussan said the brother called his mother, a nurse, who told him to remove his shirt and apply pressure on the wounds. “Just push your hands against his stomach and hold in as much blood as you can,” Bussan recalled her saying.
“I was doing like 100 mph down Columbus to get to that hospital,” he said. “And when I entered there, I was yelling, ‘I’ve got a kid with bullet wounds and he’s dying. He’s got minutes.'”
Bussan said doctors at Northwestern Hospital stabilized the man’s condition, but he remained on a ventilator due to the trauma and blood loss. Police said the man was listed in critical condition.
The brother’s mother showed up to the hospital and thanked Bussan for “giving them an opportunity to fight for their lives,” he said.
Bussan said he teared up while witnessing one brother care for the other. “I’m a bodybuilder, powerlifter, and I’m Polish and Russian. If we sit there and cry, they’d say man up,” Bussan said.
“Last night, everyone who called me said, ‘God was on your side,'” he added. “That’s the first time I’ve seen bunch of 300-pound men say, ‘God was with you, bro.’ Everyone had a soft side last night. And I’m like, this is the only night we’re sharing this, otherwise we’re a bunch of tough guys.”
‘Worst attack on democracy’ continues stillon April 29, 2021 at 4:54 pm
President Joe Biden spoke for over an hour Wednesday in his first address to a joint session of Congress, raising urgent issues from the need to get Americans vaccinated to the jobs that will be created fighting climate change to the key role immigration has always played in the American story.
But 10 words the president said early in his speech were particularly accurate and alarming, when he referred to the Jan. 6 insurrection as “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
It had to be said plainly because the bulk of the Republican Party, deformed and unrecognizable after five years of rolling like puppies at the feet of Donald Trump, still does not accept reality. Polls show 70% of Republicans believe the Big Lie that the election was stolen, despite a complete lack of evidence. Half believe the Jan. 6 insurrection against our democracy was committed not by Trump supporters whipped into a frenzy, but by Democrats — Black Lives Matter activists in whiteface, perhaps — “trying to make Trump look bad.” As if he needs help.
“The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” It must be repeated because of the shocking resilience of right-wing extremism. Indeed, Trump apologists zeroed in on these specific words for their typical hoots of incomprehension and ridicule. Yet it is literally a matter of life or death, our nation’s and theirs. Trump’s toxic distortion of masculinity that allowed him to grope women and pretend he is always right and always wins also made him reject wearing masks and vaccines — he got his in secret. Millions of Americans listened to him, causing hundreds of thousands to die. Millions still listen, meaning hundreds of thousands more will die. Following him into their graves, literally.
No one can be glad of that. It’s tragic and horrible. But I’m not writing to try and jar them from their error. That’s futile. Those who do not form their positions through reason cannot be argued out of them by reason.
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Rather I’m writing this to steel Democrats, and what few Republicans stand by the principles they once claimed, for the challenge ahead. This is a long fight and not close to over. Democracy is recent and fragile; despotism is ancient and endures. Look at Russia: its flirtation with democracy came and went. Now they have Putin, and most Russians revere Stalin.
Trump is coming back, or one of his surrogates. We must be ready. The other crucial thing Biden said Wednesday is that the “sacred right to vote” is under attack all across the country, as Trumpites try to ensure the American people don’t defeat them again at the ballot box, undercutting the mechanics of elections while calling it security.
Democrats must see this clearly and rally around the values we cherish: free and fair elections, an unfettered press, the rule of law. We need to accept that most Republicans — some otherwise good people, mumbling rationalizations for betraying America — would rather hurt our country and themselves than join together to address our common problems.
It is hard to understand.
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Maybe the trouble is a lifetime of movies where the tyrant is vanquished by the plucky band of rebels and the scales instantly fall from the eyes of the monster’s minions. They reform on the spot. The Wicked Witch of the West goes melting, melting, melting into a puddle of beautiful wickedness.
“You’ve melted her!” one of her bearskin-hatted henchmen says, kneeling before the pool of liquid witch. His comrades drop to their knees and chant in unison, “Hail Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead!”
Only in the movies. In the real world, half the castle guard would take their pikes to Dorothy and her friends, while the other half go sit in the courtyard, eyes skyward, a cargo cult waiting for the return of their beloved master, singing his praises to pass the time.
President Biden obviously has hope, and is leaving the door open for them to find their true American nature again. Some will accept his offer, and at this moment of crisis, our nation needs every true and stout heart we can get. Remember, during the American Revolution, a third of colonists were Tories, and remained loyal to King George III. That craven third, hungry for a king, is with us still, and always will be.
‘Worst attack on democracy’ continues stillon April 29, 2021 at 4:54 pm Read More »
Blackhawks, Bulls announce process for getting tickets to remaining home gameson April 29, 2021 at 5:09 pm
Now that fans will be allowed back into the United Center, what is the process for getting tickets?
The city announced Thursday that the remaining Blackhawks and Bulls games can have 25% capacity.
“We miss them. It feels like it’s been a while and we all can’t wait to have whatever amount it is back,” Blackhawks defenseman Connor Murphy said. “A lot of new guys on the team who haven’t been on the team all year don’t know what it’s like and have been itching [to experience it].
Current Blackhawks full season ticketholders will have priority access to single-game tickets starting Monday, May 3. New full season ticketholders who lock in their 2021-22 seats before Monday will also get priority access.
Remaining tickets will become available to the general public on Tuesday, May 4 at noon.
“What makes the NHL so great is the passion from the fans and the energy and history,” Murphy said. “It’s about winning together and doing it as a city. With the fan base and players, it makes it such an amazing experience. Those other cities, the games feel more intense when you hear those roars from the crowd on goals for either side. Where here, you just have that fake crowd noise lately, you know there’s not much action around the rink in the stands with big plays or big goals. So it’ll be awesome to get back closer to normal.”
Tickets will only be sold in groups of two or four adjacent seats to maintain physical distance. No two groups of seats will be closer than 6 feet apart and fans will not need to pass each other in rows of seats. Face coverings will be required inside the United Center.
All Blackhawks tickets will be distributed as mobile tickets, accessed via Ticketmaster.com. Screenshots or printouts will not work for entry into the arena.
Current and 2021-22 Bulls season ticketholders will have access to single-game tickets on May 3 and May 4. Any remaining tickets will be released to the general public on May 5 at 10 a.m.
The Bulls will also only use mobile tickets, which can be accessed via ClickTix. Like with the Blackhawks, printouts and screenshots will not be accepted.
The first Bulls home game with fans will be against the Boston Celtics on May 7 with a 6:30 p.m. start time. The Blackhawks’ first game with fans will be May 9 a 6 p.m. against the Dallas Stars.
Visit Blackhawks.com/Tickets and Bulls.com for more information.
Flashy sports gambler caught in $9.6M fraud gets more than two years in prisonon April 29, 2021 at 5:27 pm
Rob Gorodetsky moved to Las Vegas to make something of his life and wound up turning himself into a “human meme,” his attorneys said.
He created the larger-than-life “Instagram persona” known as “Big Rob” who bet big, bought flashy cars and jewelry, enjoyed piles of cash and made his way into exclusive events with celebrities and models.
But they said Gorodetsky’s piles of cash never lasted long. He often had to sell the cars immediately. “Big Rob Style” was “a living lie,” they told a judge. And Thursday, U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo sentenced Gorodetsky, 28, to 28 months in prison for wire fraud.
“You are very young,” Bucklo noted before handing down the sentence. “But it’s just a massive, massive fraud.”
The sentencing hearing on the 23rd floor of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse made for an ignominious ending for a career that once prompted USA Today to ask, “Is this the future face of sports gambling?”
A lengthy 2017 profile in the newspaper described Gorodetsky as having “emerged as one of the most compelling and controversial, albeit largely unknown, figures in sports.” It said Gorodetsky and his inner circle thought he could go on to be “America’s leading sports bettor.”
But that was before federal prosecutors filed charges against Gorodetsky in January 2020, accusing him of swindling $9.6 million out of a single investor between 2014 and 2018. Though the investor has not been named, he is described in court papers as a successful New Jersey ophthalmologist and the father of a onetime girlfriend of Gorodetsky’s.
Gorodetsky pleaded guilty shortly after the charges were filed.
The feds say Gorodetsky falsely made himself out to be a successful day trader, convincing the investor to hand over $953,000 between February and July 2014 with the understanding that they would share in the profits from the investments Gorodetsky would make. Instead, prosecutors said Gorodetsky invested only $215,000 and put another $747,388 to other use.
And while Gorodetsky told the investor the $953,000 had grown to $2 million, the money Gorodetsky had sunk into an E-Trade account was worth less than $72,000 by July 2014, records show.
Still, Gorodetsky convinced the investor to hand over another $8.74 million between July 2014 and November 2017 for sports wagering. Prosecutors said Gorodetsky used more than $2.2 million of that on travel and entertainment, as well as a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, two Lamborghinis and watch and jewelry purchases in excess of $324,000.
Prosecutors also said Gorodetsky failed to report nearly $7 million between 2014 and 2017. And before he scammed his girlfriend’s father, they said he managed to talk $516,570 out of at least eight other investors between 2011 and 2012, putting $231,500 to his own use and losing the rest in trading.
Defense attorney Chris Gair wrote in a court memo last year that Gorodetsky began his life as an “incredibly shy child” who was introduced to poker in middle school and began to gamble whenever he had the opportunity. USA Today wrote that Gorodetsky went to New Trier High School in Winnetka, and Gair wrote that Gorodetsky was suspended from school “for taking his classmates’ money at poker games and setting up a gambling hall in high school.”
Gair wrote that the USA Today profile turned out to be Gorodetsky’s undoing, prompting investigations by the Nevada Gaming Commission and the FBI.
Chicago Bears Rumors: Are the Saints trying to snipe the Bears on draft night?on April 29, 2021 at 5:05 pm
The wait is over: it’s time for the 2021 NFL Draft, and Chicago Bears fans are eagerly anticipating what may or may not happen tonight.
While many fans are hoping for the best, the reality is, we must prepare for the worst. General manager Ryan Pace may be ready to pull the trigger on a trade, but there are a lot of factors that go into such a decision.
Chicago Cubs: Rizzo Provides a Moment of Fun Amid Blowouton April 29, 2021 at 5:00 pm
The Chicago Cubs’ struggles were not solved last night during their 10-0 loss at the hands of the Atlanta Braves. However, there was one fun moment during the game.
The Atlanta Braves have humiliated the Chicago Cubs so far this season.
10-0, 5-0, and 13-4 are some of the worst scores the Cubs have given up this season and they are all at the hands of the Atlanta Braves. Kyle Hendricks had one of his worst games of the season giving up three home runs and 11 hits.
Chicago Cubs: Rizzo Provides a Moment of Fun Amid Blowouton April 29, 2021 at 5:00 pm Read More »
Chicago Bears 2021 NFL Draft: 3 bold predictions for draft weekendon April 29, 2021 at 5:30 pm
The 2021 NFL Draft is here and for the first time in three years, the Chicago Bears have a selection in the first round.
US vows again to ban menthol flavor in cigarettes, cigarsAssociated Presson April 29, 2021 at 4:09 pm
Any menthol ban will take years to implement and will likely face legal challenges from tobacco companies.
WASHINGTON — U.S. health regulators pledged again Thursday to try to ban menthol cigarettes, this time under pressure from African American groups to remove the mint flavor popular among Black smokers.
The Food and Drug Administration has attempted several times to get rid of menthol but faced pushback from Big Tobacco, members of Congress and competing political interests in both the Obama and Trump administrations. Any menthol ban will take years to implement and will likely face legal challenges from tobacco companies.
Thursday’s announcement is the result of a lawsuit filed by anti-smoking and medical groups last summer to force the FDA to finally make a decision on menthol, alleging that regulators had “unreasonably delayed” responding to a 2013 petition seeking to ban the flavor.
The deadline for the agency’s response was Thursday. The FDA said it aims to propose regulations banning the flavor in the coming year.
The action would also ban menthol and fruity flavors from low-cost, small cigars, which are increasingly popular with young people, especially Black teens.
“Taken together, these policies will help save lives and improve the public health of our country as we confront the leading cause of preventable disease and death,” Mitch Zeller, the FDA’s head of tobacco, said in a statement.
Menthol is the only cigarette flavor that was not banned under the 2009 law that gave the FDA authority over tobacco products, an exemption negotiated by industry lobbyists. The act did, though, instruct the agency to continue to weigh banning menthol.
The flavor’s persistence has infuriated anti-smoking advocates, who point to research that menthol’s numbing effect masks the harshness of smoking, likely making it easier to start and harder to quit.
The mint-flavored cigarettes are overwhelmingly used by young people and minorities, particularly Black smokers, 85% of whom smoke menthols. That compares to about a third of white smokers.
“The science is there, the data is there, so why are these products still on the market?” said Carol McGruder of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council.
Her group sued along with Action on Smoking and Health, the American Medical Association and the National Medical Association, which represents Black physicians.
For decades, companies focused menthol marketing and promotions on Black communities, including sponsoring music festivals and neighborhood events. Company documents released via 1990s litigation also show companies viewed menthol cigarettes as good “starter” products because they were more palatable for teenagers .
“There was a specific, intentional focus on creating the next generation of smokers by making menthol cigarettes available in those communities,” said Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics’ group on minority health and equity.
In the late 1990s, new restrictions banned cigarette advertising from billboards, public transit and most event sponsorships. Companies shifted more promotions to retail locations like gas stations and convenience stores, which researchers have shown are heavily concentrated in Black neighborhoods
About a third of all cigarettes sold in the U.S. are menthol and its elimination would be a huge blow to tobacco companies, including Altria and Reynolds American, maker of the leading menthol brands, Newport and Kool. With the slow decline of smoking, tobacco companies have been diversifying into alternative products, including electronic cigarettes and tobacco pouches. But those ventures still account for a tiny slice of industry sales.
A spokeswoman for Reynolds American said the company would submit evidence countering FDA’s proposal.
“Published science does not support regulating menthol cigarettes differently from non-menthol,” she said in a statement.
An Altria spokesman said in a statement that “criminalizing menthol” would have “serious unintended consequences.”
Smoking can cause cancer, strokes and heart attacks and is blamed for 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S. About 14% of Americans smoke cigarettes, with rates roughly even between white and Black populations. But Black smokers are less likely to successfully quit, a trend that the U.S. Surgeon General and others have attributed to menthol cigarettes.
Menthol occurs naturally in mint plants. Known for its cooling effect, the chemical is used in cough drops and other medicines. Cigarette makers began adding the chemical in the 1920s after realizing it reduced the throat hit of cigarettes.
Past government efforts targeting menthol have faced opposition from lawmakers from traditional tobacco states like North Carolina, but also some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, many who have received campaign contributions from cigarette makers.
Some caucus members warned that banning menthol would create an illegal market for the products, subjecting Black communities to increased law enforcement.
But calls for action have been growing and last year the House of Representatives voted to ban the flavor with support from the majority of Black members. The bill stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate after Trump made clear he opposed the measure.
The FDA’s attempts to get rid of menthol have repeatedly been delayed or derailed by forces inside and outside government.
In 2011, an outside panel of FDA advisers recommended banning menthol after concluding that it increases smoking among young people and minorities and makes it harder for them to quit. But cigarette makers challenged the findings in court, claiming some panel members had conflicts of interest they hadn’t disclosed.
In 2013, the FDA conducted its own internal study and reached similar conclusions, but the Obama administration did not move ahead with a ban.
Under the Trump administration, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb tried to again restart the process but it was never greenlighted by the White House.
Massachusetts and California have passed laws banning menthol. But California’s ban was suspended in January after a legal challenge backed by tobacco companies; the issue is on the ballot next year.
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Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter
On cable TV, not all gun violence stories get covered equallyGene Lyonson April 29, 2021 at 4:20 pm
Criminals in street shootings don’t wear body cams, so TV footage is harder to come by. Uncomfortable facts are routinely ignored or suppressed to preserve the good-versus-evil storyline.
A suggestion for cable news programmers: Instead of filling every broadcast with the latest presumptive police outrage, try covering the latest drive-by killings. Show us more of what’s really happening on the streets where we live. Newspapers and local TV are already on it.
For example, the morning after police released video of the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a Chicago cop, the lead headline in the Chicago Sun-Times read: “Girl, 7, fatally shot at McDonald’s drive-thru.”
Witnesses told reporters they were astonished by the brazenness of the gang members who opened fire on a rival in front of many onlookers and several security cameras. The little girl seemingly got in the way.
Young Adam Toledo, of course, was involved in a shooting episode, as well, immediately before his deadly confrontation with police. Heaven knows, Chicagoans have reason to be leery of their city’s police department, but context is crucial.
Wednesday morning’s headline in the Little Rock newspaper was, “Peace urged after man killed, toddlers hurt by park gunfire.” The toddlers, aged 3 and 4, are expected to recover. More collateral damage, as it’s called when soldiers shoot civilians. Two young men playing basketball were the intended targets; one survived. Last month, however, a 10-year-old girl was killed in a similar incident in another city park.
In Miami last weekend, 3-year-old Elijah LaFrance was killed in a drive-by shooting after his own birthday party — the third little kid murdered there in recent months. The others were aged 7 and 6.
Criminals, however, don’t wear body cams, so TV footage is harder to come by. Also, because filing wrongful death lawsuits against street gangs is futile, CNN’s roving cast of pundits and personal injury lawyers aren’t primed to respond with appropriate indignation.
“When a suspect is a person of color, there is no attempt to de-escalate the situation,” said civil rights lawyer and ubiquitous talking head Ben Crump regarding a recent incident in Knoxville, Tennessee. “Police shoot first and ask questions later, time after time, because Black lives are afforded less value.”
Regarding the value of Black lives, here’s some important information: According to an extraordinary piece of reporting by Rick Rojas in The New York Times, Anthony J. Thompson, age 17, who was killed by Knoxville police in an armed confrontation in a cramped bathroom at Austin-East Magnet High School, was the fifth student from that campus to die of gun violence during this school year.
Five kids, all African American, all shot dead at one school in one year.
“It makes it harder to get out of the house every day knowing another child has lost their life,” one victim’s older sister said.
So far, however, this ongoing tragedy has drawn little commentary on CNN or MSNBC. “Among our elites,” my friend Bob Somerby writes, “no one cares about the gun violence which takes so many other lives. It doesn’t matter if Black people get shot and killed unless it’s done by police.”
At his website The Daily Howler, Somerby has been writing acid commentaries about the melodramatic coverage given police/civilian shootings. In the wake of the Derek Chauvin murder trial, the sad and dangerous truth is that on anything regarding cops and race, you pretty much can’t expect anything like accurate, dispassionate journalism from too much of the news media. Particularly not the cable networks.
Uncomfortable facts are routinely ignored or suppressed to preserve the good-versus-evil storyline. Pundits appear on national TV to opine about complex life-and-death situations without having the first idea what they’re talking about. Once the basic storyline gets laid down, it rarely changes.
Consider, for example, the tragic killing of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb by a veteran officer who says she mistakenly fired her handgun instead of a Taser — a story so improbable it almost has to be true, and will almost certainly result in a felony conviction. Wright apparently told his mother that he was stopped for having an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror.
Pundits at PBS, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post have given the air-freshener angle a workout. Al Sharpton mentioned it during an emotional eulogy at Wright’s funeral. So why were Brooklyn Center police arresting Wright, and why did he flee?
Well, it turns out that Wright had been charged with aggravated armed robbery in 2019, released on bail, subsequently picked up for carrying a pistol and fleeing police, released again, and then blew off a court hearing on the gun charge. He had to figure they’d keep him locked up this time.
So he tried to run. Terrible decision.
Not a capital crime, no. And still a tragedy.
But if you’re one of those posting indignant Facebook screeds about cops stopping drivers for minor infractions, now you know why.
Gene Lyons is a columnist for the Arkansas Times.
Send letters to [email protected].